Getting Serious

I run a booking agency out of my computer, which is sometimes in the kitchen. I've got a solid roster of great people for whom I'd love to organize six consecutive European tours, with one offs on cruises and celebrity hayrides and the long-awaited revival of airships [I think it's safe to write that we've recovered from the Hindenburg]. In preparation, I have, over the past three months, built up six Google spread sheets of venues. They are titled: EU!, da north, da south, da wild wild west, da middle west, and College Venues. Excluding the first spread sheet, the venues, separated by region, are organized by state, and then city, with their calendar, and all of their contact information, and then I created a column for "Notez".

Although I've Google-shared these documents with several people, I'm the only one who adds to it, and probably the only person who's ever read them over, so these Notez are Notez To Self. At some point in September, I developed a system of adjectives to describe the venues. One of them is "serious," which refers to the level of fame of the bands performing at a venue, compared with the aggressiveness of the language in their website's booking instructions. If a venue's calendar has mostly corny band names [Frigid Magnet, Greetings From Hell, etc] with an inexplicable Monotonix date and, to request a show, demands that you fill out a booking survey with references and warns that, due to the high level of submissions, they may take up to 3 months to respond, the venue may warrant a Note like, "less serious than they wish" or "tribute bands play here." If the venue planned a bunch of Two Sundays Til Death-style bands but had an upcoming Vanessa Carlton show, they received a "Vanessa Carlton serious" or "seriously hilarious." And if they required a mailed-in press kit I wrote, "are they serious??????"

In my EU! spreadsheet, I called two places "gay," although I generally don't resort to slurs, but these were kind of earned; for one venue I wrote, "probably gay" for a place named "Razzmatazz," which didn't update its calendar, and then for another venue three rows down I wrote, "Franz Ferdinand gay" [because the space had an upcoming Franz Ferdinand concert, because European culture is developmentally delayed].

So if you wonder how I spend my unemployed days at home, or if you're a band, questioning why I haven't organized a show for you just yet, please respect and pardon my behavior; through diligent research, I'm trying to get more serious.